Thursday, July 23, 2015

Like most women my age, I grew up with Batman: The Animated Series. (You're already hearing the theme song in your head, aren't you?) Kevin Conroy is my Batman. Mark Hamill is my Joker. Adrienne Barbeau is my Catwoman. Two Face is, okay -- he pretty much got phoned in after becoming Two Face (and getting played by Ivy) but that's not important.

The B:TAS created Harley Quinn, gave a real backstory to Mr. Freeze beyond a mascot for igloo coolers, and was the reason so many people were clamoring to see Poison Ivy in a movie (DAMN YOU, SCHUMACHER!).

When they announced the Batman: Arkham Asylum game was going to be a cast reunion from B:TAS you'd think I'd have wrested the controller from my husband. The graphics are amazing with that nice gothic touch that screams Gotham instead of "Chicago but Day for Night." The voice acting is a nostalgic punch to the happy. For the first time you feel like you're playing as Batman with all the sneaking, "beating up" thugs, and gadgets. So many damn gadgets.

The story is...okay. It always felt a bit like a possibly interesting thirty minute story stretched to fill an entire movie. But we've got Mark Hamill back as the Joker! And you can glide around in a tattered batcape and punch Bane.

But where the animated series not only created whole cloth new and interesting female characters as well as breathing life into old ones, the video game stuffed them back into the old fashioned boxes comics refuses to climb out of without a lot of kicking and whining.

Here's the first Harley Quinn outfit. Get it, because her name sounds like Harlequin WHICH WAS WHY JOKER WAS FASCINATED WITH HER IN THE FIRST PLACE!

It gives an innocence to a very dark character trapped in an abusive relationship. Her story line of trying to break away from Joker with Ivy's help and reform only to be pulled back in was both heartfelt and goofy. She just wanted to buy a dress.

And here's what they came up for her in the Batman: Arkham Asylum game:

Wow, that sure is empowering how she's wearing nothing to do with a clown whatsoever. She looks like a woman tasked with dressing up like a slutty mime from A League of Her Own for halloween. Sadly, the costumes get worse and worse with each game.

And Ivy, poor Ivy had to use up all of Arkham's double stick tape to get her toddler sized shirt to stay on. She's really in a bad mood because of the yeast infection from her poison ivy panties.

None of the few women in the Batman games have anything to do with each other. Harley's only there to be another Joker boss. Ivy exists so Batman can once again capture her, throw her in jail, then realize she's the one who can cure (insert whatever stupid plot they have here).

Their relationship, as complicated as it is, is downplayed and ignored because this game is 200% women are only there to support or antagonize men. If a man walks out of a room, women cease to exist.

And then there's Catwoman.

Rocksteady, come here. We need to have a talk. Maybe you remember all that controversy over your catwoman walking around like a talking fleshlight? Of course, most people clung to the use of thugs calling her a bitch while glossing over the fact that we had our first playable female character and she swung her hips about so hard while in nine inch stilettos I was afraid she might dislocate her spine.

Wanna bet she's got almost an entire thanksgiving dinner stuck down her cleavage?

There was quite a blowback from that and not only from women who were sick and tired of only being represented as a meat bag for wrapping around a guy's dick. Even a few men were pissed off about this Catwoman (this was also pre-Gamer Gate bullshit, so they weren't labelled a SJW and were just accused of being white knights who only think of women as people because they want to get sex. Ah, innocent times).

I bring it up because clearly you haven't learned a god damn thing.

Enter Arkham Knight (and click away if you want to avoid any spoilers - though I won't be bringing up the ending, any of them).

Oracle's been the linchpin for our broody always works alone Batman. She's locked up in the batcave doing massive google searches and scrolling through her Netflix list when not calling Bats out on his shit. Which, of course he ignores because she's a girl and girls don't know nothing.

Originally, she was voiced wonderfully by Kimberly Brooks (who was Ash in Mass Effect) but for reasons I cannot fathom, for the last installment they replaced her with the dead voiced Ashley Greene - the only likeable one in Twilight (other than the armadillo). Did someone at the studio suddenly wake up and realize "Oh shit, we don't have any known actors in this game!" We can't replace Batman, so, I know! How about we give some actual cut scenes to Oracle and then bring in that cutsey faced one from that vampire movie. That'll get girls to play our game!

Uh huh...

So, Oracle's helping Batman as he keeps yelling at Robin and Nightwing about how much alone working he does when dun dun dun! she gets kidnapped.

Are you kidding me?

In fact, all the women wind up getting kidnapped. Catwoman is taken by the Riddler because he must have been stuck on a cat related puzzle and needed her help or something. And once again Ivy's manhandled and chucked around by Batman because he needs her help to something something cure. But because it's Batman it's not like he can ask nicely or agree to a deal. Instead it's all clenched jaw and mad brooding!

Harley's so sneeze and you'll miss her (in an even stupider fucking outfit) she somehow misses out on the kidnapping spree. But when you have a whole four women in your game, and they spend most of it needing Batman to rescue them, you can just fuck off with dropping in a twilight actor to get women to play your game.

Scarecrow has Oracle for reasons that are vague and kind of stupid. After Batman goes around promising that he'll get her back and doesn't need help, he finds her and -- slip on your spoiler glasses now:

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!

Not only do they kill Oracle is the stupidest fucking way possible, Scarecrow flat out says "Oh, I only did it to motivate you Batman."

Did the writers look up the definition of fridging and think "Hey, that's pretty cool. We should include that! And get a vampire in here too. Kids love vampires."

You've had Oracle be useful, contribute to the plot, even show some characterization but nope, who cares about all of that? She's only here to make Batman even more broody and angsty. Not that Batman gets more than a quick "Noo" and then he's out the door acting like nothing happens. Way to really drive home how important Barbara Gordon was to him. Of course Robin gets his ass captured but rather than being forced to shoot himself in the head (seriously? GAH!) he's held for like two seconds and then fights his way out.

WHY COULDN'T ORACLE HAVE DONE THAT? We've already got like fifteen Robins flapping around, wouldn't have killing one off also have been a much better bookend for your great big secret in the game?

Oh, but I forgot, women are the delicate hothouse flowers in stinging nettle panties. They need the rescuing or to be crushed to motivate our hero. Men are powerful and can save themselves. Silly me.

It isn't just the hamfisted 1970s approach to female characters that turned me so far off the Arkham games I want to take a comically sized clown hammer to them.

Batman is the worst! By the third installment, he's reached such a high point of not giving a fuck he's added missiles to his bat-tank and regularly runs people over. Oh, I'm sorry, he "nudges them with his cattle prod." Nudges fifteen feet into the air where they land on concrete, but I'm sure they're fine and not at all dead. The charismatic Bruce Wayne that made Conroy's Batman sing is long dead. A psychopath in a black cape ran him over with his cattleprod tank.

I'm doing my damnedest to remember a time when Batman wasn't a colossal prick, but it's like Nolan not only destroyed all future Batmans but somehow washed away the likeability of past ones as well. God, even Adam West is squatting in his bright grey tights moaning over his dead parents and how only he can protect the night. MAKE IT STOP!

What made the Animated Series so great was because Batman wasn't a lone wolf. He'd call on Robin regularly to help and not with that "Fine, I guess you can work with me THIS ONE TIME!" resignation. When Batgirl rolled onto the scene they threw open the cave for her and treated her like one of their own instead of someone to sit in the batcave and do google searches bats was too lazy for.

And all villains were treated like people. Women weren't shackled off to be rescued by our hero. Ivy was complicated, Harley became instantaneously popular because of her villain/redemption/villain stories. And Catwoman wasn't there to purr and get dick's hard. She had her own plans, she was always trying to rescue animals and build shelters. She had a life that had fuck all to do with Batman.

And therein lies the problem. A good game doesn't feel like the NPCs all shut down the second your character leaves a room. You want something bubbling below the surface, people with their own lives that may not add to the plot, but enrich the world. But this is Batman, and Batman has somehow become every stunted man's fantasy of being the MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE! If people aren't talking about Batman at that very second, he'll do it his damn self. Seriously Bats, the reason the villains know your every move is because you won't stop talking about every damn little decision you make. SHUT UP!

I always felt a tug about the Arkham games, like I should want to play them, I should want to get into the world, but something rang sour I couldn't put my finger to. Sure, Ivy and Harley are dressed like the slutty Halloween versions of themselves, but that's par for the fucking course in video games unfortunately. (I would kill to see the slutified version of Two-Face or Penguin. Maybe Joker in one of those cock socks with a clown head.) It took until watching Oracle get scared into taking her own life that I finally realized it, Rocksteady hates women and really doesn't want them in their playground.

Oh sure, they announced that Batgirl DLC (which is its own special rant - studios shuttling off any minority characters to their DLC and leaving the main game full of white dicks. Yeah, we know why you do it. Stop patting yourself on the back for your quarter assed inclusiveness.) but if you don't think Barbra Gordon won't be sashaying her un-shattered spine the same way as Catwoman do I have a bridge to sell you.

Sorry, Batman: The Animated Series. You brought a lot of great into the canon but sometimes you make a monster or two by accident as well.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

A few years back I sent my food scientist husband a link to a Japanese kit that lets people make food using only powder.

Fascinating and adorable, he couldn't stop talking about it and the little tube of "sausage" for weeks. (When not trying to make an army of carrot super mutants in his lab basement).

After flipping through some ads he gave me the same doe eyes the dog tries when she wants a treat. He discovered that the powdered food kits made their way to the US and really wanted to try one.

Here they're called Yummy Nummies because everything in America is covered in a layer of high fructose corn syrup. After scouring a few stores during the fourth of independence weekend we finally found some at Target. We skipped past the dessert ones, because like an EZ bake oven of old, those might actually be palatable.

And here's the video of him making it while I provide my usually snarky commentary behind the camera:
If you don't feel like watching the video, the Best Ever Burger Makerˆøˆ comes with a plastic casing molded into squares to do your mixing in, a handful of packets filled with the powders, and a tiny plate/knife/spoon to try and up the adorableness.

But there is no magic in this thing, no wonder at making grown up food super tiny. Yummy Nummies is the dead racoon floating in your fairy pond; the harsh reminder that the world killed your fantasy dreams in a murder/suicide pact. It's so grimdark you can barely see an inch past your nose, and that's how you like it, raging against the ills of the world in your lair while prodding a plate of hard mashed potatoes formed in a fry shape.

You saw the fantasy, now meet the reality:

The fries, surprise surprise, taste like potato buds nuked in the microwave for a few seconds. A bit of the edges hardened up enough to give it shape, but the middle is full on week old mashed potatoes from a haunted elementary school. You'd be better off dumping a handful of potato buds into your mouth and gnawing on those.

The burger tastes about 99.99% like dough. Despite smelling like the innards of a tauntaun, the burger patty tasted of nothing, the beany powder evaporating on the tongue. The "cheese" was powdered cheeze-its reconstituted with a bit of water and smeared across some wax paper. It wasn't even cheesy enough to reach Cheeto levels, offering up barely a blip to the flavor palate.

The weirdest part on the burger wasn't the reeking meat, the radioactive cheese, or the still-a-dough bun. It was the ketchup. Instead of that healthy tomato red, this ketchup was a deep crimson which refused to fully solubilize the powder. Maybe the chunks of powder were supposed to be in there, I have no idea. The dried blood condiment tasted less like ketchup and more like a weak barbecue sauce stored at the bottom of a spittoon.

But the true abomination of the meal was the one I figured they could easily get right. How hard is soda pop? Nigh on impossible, apparently. Despite having the familiar caramel cola color, that thing had top notes of lime and base ones of liquid hatred. If you dumped a box of baking soda on your tongue and washed it down with lime juice, it'd still be better than that thimble of soda.

Because I wasn't about to let my husband have all the fun, I decided to make their Chix Mini Nuggets. (Chix sounds like the stripper name Camilla adopted after her final breakup with Gonzo. Look, we all knew you guys weren't going to make it. You're a chicken who can't talk, he's a whatever.)

I think there might be a wee bit of false advertising going on in that marketing department. My Chix nuggets never once kicked out sparkles or looked like actual meat. The ingredients are mostly potato powder, which is what the "chicken" tasted like: garlic and onion spice to cover the fact you're eating potato lumps pretending it's chicken.

Like all things American, we imported something, dumbed and cheapened it down, then marketed it at kids. At the heafty price tag of $10 and $6 for those kits, you're better off just letting your little Jaydens and Scadens play with a set of real knives. At least you'll have a decent meal to eat while waiting in the emergency room.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Yesterday, I took Es on the same damn walk I always do. Through the same park, saw the same people walking their dogs, past the same row of stepford clone houses, but then it all went bad.

From across the street bolted two dogs, one a chocolate lab, the other some little terrier (I'm shit at identifying little dogs). This is actually a regular occurrence because people fucking suck at restraining their dogs. My usual response is to stop so the dogs running to meet mine spend as little time in the street as possible - limiting the amount of chances of getting hit by a car.

But I'm not doing that anymore.

Completely unprovoked, the chocolate ran over and bit Es in the ass. She shrieked and cowered away. I shouted "HEY!" at the dog and stomped my feet towards it which was enough to startle it away. The terrier swarmed by her head also in an aggressive mode, but I scared it away before it could do anything.

I tried to drag Es away while the idiot for an owner kept mumbling sorry and tried to wrangle his fucking dogs. I got a few more houses down when I saw blood dripping on the pavement. It coated her backside, a red as vibrant as tempera paint.

Es got her fathers lack of pain receptors. Aside from the whimper, she showed almost no signs of distress. Even her tail was back up and wagging a bit from the joy of a walk.

When I saw the blood, I grabbed her and doubled back, running towards that asshole's house. I told him my dog was bleeding and to get a fucking towel.

While she drenched his grass in her blood, he fumbled to unlock his door -- that door his lab just burst through to bite mine. It had to take two to three minutes before he finally got in and grabbed a wad of paper towels.

I grabbed them and held the papers against her back end trying to stem the tide, while that fucker grabbed Es. She's very good about a lot of shit, but there comes a point when she gets tired of being held. I tried to get him to fucking stop but he wouldn't listen. He said she was a good dog and I dug the knife in saying cold, "Yes she is. She's never bit anyone."

He even took the paper towels away from me to hold them against my dog's wound himself, as if I was some waifish ingenue who would pass out at the side of blood.

You bastard, my hands are coated in it because of your dog!

He tried to downplay my dog's injury, but I saw blood coming out of her anus and all I could think was possible colon perforation and contamination. But Es was not happy, and I got the blood to slow to a trickle out of the bite wound in her taint area. So, after asking about his dogs shots, I bundled her off and got her home. (I feared if I asked to see paperwork, it'd take an hour from how long it took to just get the towels).

Es was so good about me messing around with her ass. She wasn't happy about all the attention and I'm sure she was hurting like hell. But she was a trooper, standing there while I first tried to clean the blood matted area with a wet paper towel, then was back to just trying to get the deep wound to stop bleeding.

It was down to a darker weep, but if she moved too much (which is all she does) it started back up.

I sent my husband out to get a styptic stick, but apparently they don't make them anymore and had to try and hold some powder vertical against my dog's wound to try and scab it up. When I wasn't pressing a paper towel or a weird dark powder against her ass, Es's tail wagged and she chewed down a treat. I think she got about her body weight in them by the end.

The outer wound stopped bleeding but whatever happened in her anus concerned me more so I called the vet. They were booked but were willing to get us in.

For whatever reason Es LOVES the vet. It's all these people to meet and she gets treats. Going is christmas for her. This time was no different, her tail wagging as she climbed onto the table and wanting to see everyone, even the unknown doctor. We lucked out and got in about as soon as we arrived.

The good news is she didn't need stitches. She's on antibiotics for 15 days, which will be fun. My dog is sneaky about hiding pills.

With the vet bill in hand, we drove right back to that asshole's house. I wasn't about to let him forget and get off scot-free. Unfortunately, I wasn't in the right state to memorize the house number, and thanks to america's weird cloning house project, every fucking one looked the damn same.

I tried knocking on a few doors asking about a chocolate lab, but the neighbors gave a confused shrug.

In the end, I crossed back to the side of the street I was walking on, spotted the blood drops still on the sidewalk, and deduced what house I suspected it might be. But when I rang the bell, surprise surprise, no one was home.

I still wanted to be sure and tried a house next to it. The owner had his own black dog and when I asked about a chocolate lab in the area, his eyes darkened as he glanced to his dog. Seems there'd nearly been an incident before.

This dog is trouble. For one to run across the street outside of its territory and bite an unprovoked dog is dangerous as shit. The next time it could easily be a child. And I keep thinking what if the chocolate had been at her head. It could have gone for her neck and killed her.

We're going to try finding this guy to pay for the vet bills tonight. Right now Es is sleeping, generally acting like her normal self, but I'm not sure how the next bowel movement will go.

One thing I'm certain of, we're finding a new walking path and if another dog ever runs across the street towards her I'm going to shout at it until it goes away.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Video game players are growing up along with the writers, devs, and protagonists. The average gamer is in her 30s. Ten years ago the only one who could save the world was usually a fresh faced 20 something, now they're all in their 30s with a wife and/or kid in tow (to get sacrificed to motivate our lantern jawed hero, of course).

But one thing isn't aging along with the creaking knees unable to handle a five story fall; sex is still treated like a 13 year old boy snapping a girl's bra.

In Skyrim, if you wander lost into Riften there's a good chance you'll find yourself in Helga's Bunkhouse - a nice place if you like splinters and belligerent innkeepers. The real quest (Caught Red Handed) begins when you talk to Helga's niece Svana. In true Skyrim fashion she's probably sweeping in the main hall for seven hours, or trapped in between the floor and wall calmly eating a piece of fruit.

She's pissed that Helga makes her sweep for seven hours a day yet the floor never gets clean. Really, Helga seems to be doing the girl a favor keeping her employed despite her complete uselessness. Svana has a dream -- not one to escape her working conditions, start her own inn, and have to deal with adventurers reeking of dragons one day snapping and killing everyone in her basement for funsies.

No, Svana has a clever plan, Sir. She thinks her aunt is disgusting because she beds all these men. The men aren't disgusting. That's just what men do. Dragons got to wipe out entire villages and men got to fuck around. Rather than confront her own aunt, tell her her puritanical views, maybe ask how she managed to figure out this sex thing, Svana wants you to gather tokens from all the men Helga made the mudcrab of two backs with in this month.

Okay? So, how many tokens? Twenty?

No, that's horrible!

Fifteen?

No, not that many.

Ten? Five? Give me a hint, lady!

Three. Collect three tokens from ALL three men Helga's dragon boned in a month. That's not even one a week. She is really slacking off on achieving that slut trophy.

What makes this quest even more stupid is that Helga's reason for giving out little souvenirs after luring those poor innocent men into her sex web is because she worships Dibella. We're not talking one of the Daedric princes here who love to mess around with mortals because evil is fun, Dibella is a goddess. She's one of the Nine (Eight) Divine. It's a bit like deciding that whole church must be a slut because it's named after Mary.

Dwarves in Space

Thousands of years after the jewelry's destroyed, the sword reforged, the dragon ridden, and the indecipherable prophecy translated into a recipe for sugared biscuits, the dwarves turned to that final frontier: space. And along came the elves, orcs, gnomes, trolls, ogres, and those vermin-like upstarts, humans.

The King's Blood

Ciara, a black servant into her sixteenth year, finds herself on a mad quest across the countryside trying to get the second son and possibly only hope of the severed Ostero line back onto his throne. Along the way, she and Aldrin...